Question

*please write a 250 word memo* thank you ?

explain actual business examples that assist General Motors in operating more effectively and efficiently to prevent waste kn materials and labor and to implement better processes (standard or customized procedures.)

Answer 1

Industrial facilities in the United States generate and manage about 7.6 billion tons of
nonhazardous industrial waste in land disposal units annually, according the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. General Motors, however, reuses, recycles or composts 84 percent of its worldwide
manufacturing waste and has 142 landfill-free facilities.
The landfill-free program allows GM to reduce its waste footprint, while creating greater environmental
awareness among employees and communities where it makes and sells cars and trucks. The GM
workforce is consistently encouraged to find new ways to operate leaner and more efficiently.
The following summarizes GM’s blueprint for attaining landfill-free leadership. It is intended to help
companies of all sizes and industries reduce waste and create efficiencies.
1. Track Waste Data
Data is the backbone of any companywide zero-waste initiative. An organization cannot manage what it
does not measure. GM uses a single resource data management system, allowing it to best manage its
waste streams with the byproducts yielding valuable commodities.
Waste data tracking allows a company to comprehend all materials generated, reused and recycled.
Doing so reveals opportunities to improve and climb the waste-reduction hierarchy. Data can be
repurposed to create specific plant goals and metrics.
Tracking data across all operations, where recycling infrastructures may not be developed, also enables
the sharing of lessons learned.
2. Define Zero Waste
Although work is being done by various groups to standardize the term “zero waste,” definitions can
vary across companies. According to the Zero Waste International Alliance, businesses and communities
that achieve more than 90 percent diversion of waste from landfills and incinerators are considered
acceptable in achieving zero waste.
GM goes further.
Maintaining a common and consistent landfill-free definition with steps and procedures goes a long
way. The following requirements define success for GM’s landfill-free program.
• All waste generated from ongoing, day-to-day operations, including episodic/periodic events
such as pit cleanouts.
• Byproducts dispositioned by any method except placement in a landfill.
• Byproduct materials sent to an off-site recycling or processing center and subsequently
landfilled must not exceed 1 percent, by weight, of the facility’s total annual waste production.
Ash generated from waste-to-energy recovery systems is exempt.
Although it is desirable and recommended to recycle and reuse byproducts of non-manufacturing event
waste such as construction, demolition and remediation materials whenever feasible, these one-off
event materials do not count as part of daily operations.
Though construction, demolition and remediation waste is exempt from consideration when
determining a landfill-free designation, all future GM North American construction sites will adhere to a
process that helps reduce waste and increase energy efficiency throughout construction. The “GM
Green Construction” program in North America aims to reduce the weight of construction debris per
project by 90 percent through recycling and sending less to landfill.
3. Prioritize Waste-Reduction Activities
Following are prioritized byproduct projects that enable facility landfill-free designations.
1. Eliminating or reducing the amount of byproduct materials
2. Reusing materials onsite
3. Reusing materials externally
4. Recycling materials onsite
5. Recycling materials offsite
6. Composting either on or off site
7. Recovering the energy from materials (incineration with energy recovery) either onsite or offsite
8. Incineration without energy recovery.
Reused waste is put to use in its original form with minimal or no processing while recycled waste is re-
processed for a different use, such as wood pallets that are shredded and used for wood chips or
plastics melted down and used to make other plastic parts.
GM’s 79 landfill-free manufacturing sites reuse, recycle or compost, on average, approximately 96
percent of their waste from daily operations and convert 4 percent to energy. The goal is to eliminate,
reuse and recycle, with expensive energy conversion being a last resort for challenging materials.
4. Engage Employees and Build a Sustainability Culture
A key element of any waste-reduction program is the ability for employees to envision other uses for
material. While some employees are comfortable challenging conventional operations, leaders can
create rewards for new waste-reduction ideas and encourage employees to develop job functions with
the environment in mind.
Finding uses for difficult-to-manage materials such as grinding swarf, process pit sludge cleanout and
debris, filtration media, and certain scrap vehicle components can be a challenge, but solutions can be
found when thinking creatively.
GM addressed these materials by finding or developing global practices from subject matter experts,
peer reviews and lessons learned. The GM staff experts view data on a regular basis and target certain
byproduct streams for innovative waste-reduction projects. The company communicates the solutions.
and formalizes them within a web-based best practice system. GM then tracks these best practices to
conformance and evaluates plant management teams based on their facility’s performance to the total
waste reduction and zero-landfill goal.
Wherever possible, GM continues to make material substitutions and process changes to improve
recyclability and design out inefficiencies. A small corporate team oversees, coordinates and supports
the waste program to ensure both a holistic approach and the sharing of best practices across sites.
Here are a few innovative uses for some of GM’s byproducts:
1. Converting 227 miles of oil-soaked booms off the Alabama and Louisiana coasts from the Gulf of
Mexico oil spill into two production years’ worth of air deflectors in the Chevrolet Volt.
2. Recycling cardboard packaging into Buick Verano headliners to provide acoustic padding that
reduces noise in the passenger compartment.
3. Collecting more than 3.2 million water bottles from six GM facilities and the Flint community to
recycle them into a fabric insulation that covers the Chevrolet Equinox v6 engine to dampen
noise, an air filtration component used in 10 GM facilities, and insulation for the Empowerment
Plan coat that transforms into a sleeping bag for the homeless.
4. Mixing plastic caps that protect vehicle parts during shipment with other post-consumer plastics
like bottle caps to make air deflectors for Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks.
5. Recycling GM test tires and tires from the Mississippi River into the manufacturing of air and
water baffles for a variety of GM vehicles.
6. Reworking pallets to form wood beams for the homebuilding industry.
7. Capturing solvents used between paint color changes and reformulating them into a paint cured
and hardened with ultraviolet light and applied to plant floors.
8. Converting 1,000 scrap Chevrolet Volt battery covers into Scaly-sided Merganser, wood duck,
screech owl and bat nesting boxes.
9. Reusing 1,600 shipping crates as raised garden beds in a once-abandoned parking lot for a
community garden and an urban farming initiative supporting soup kitchens.
10. Composting food scraps from various facilities to form nutrient-rich organic humus used as
natural fertilizer in gardens.
5. Strengthen Supplier Partnerships
As a result of its landfill-free program, GM has built a strong network of suppliers committed to keeping
materials in their use phase. It looks for ways to recycle plant waste into vehicle parts or plant supplies.
This type of “closed-loop” effort offers the highest form of recycling.
GM plants hire resource managers – experts in waste elimination and reduction – to assist. Resource
management is a strategic alternative to contemporary waste management. GM finds it helps improve
resource efficiency through enhanced source reduction, recycling and recovery. The contractors'
activities align with the company’s strategic goals and objectives, and all manufacturing byproducts are
included in the program’s scope of services.
6. Resolve Regulatory Challenges
Sometimes various government regulations require disposal of certain commodities, but solutions may
exist to avoid landfilling. In some instances, GM works with regulatory agencies to help them
understand potential options for challenging waste streams and discuss ways to best manage them
using sound scientific principles. Smaller companies may partner with bigger companies to do this or
join a business association to help address challenges and generate solutions together.
Scrapped battery covers for the Chevrolet Volt were converted into nesting boxes for wood ducks, screech owls and bats.
Scrap aluminum shavings from machining transmission casings are melted down and used to create more casings.
Paint sludge from GM’s Lansing Grand River plant has been turned into plastic material and used for shipping containers durable enough to hold Chevrolet Volt and Cruze engine components.
Solvents used between paint color changes have been reformulated into a paint, cured and hardened with ultraviolet light, and applied to plant floors.
Of course, not every industrial byproduct ends up generating revenue, but it still can be useful.

250 shipping crates from one Michigan plant were turned into raised garden beds for an urban garden in Southwest Detroit, providing nearby residents with locally grown food.
GM donated scrap vehicle sound absorption material to help insulate coats that transform into sleeping bags for the homeless, an initiative led by a Detroit humanitarian.